<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Boys Don’t Cry by viktorstardust</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26231539">Boys Don’t Cry</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/viktorstardust/pseuds/viktorstardust'>viktorstardust</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>LISA (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, IDK how else to tag, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Sexuality Crisis, Underage Drinking, its the 80s and theyre teenagers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:20:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,809</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26231539</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/viktorstardust/pseuds/viktorstardust</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Happy birthday.”</p><p>They get an evil look from dad when they get outside and he’s already in the driver’s seat like he’s been sitting here for hours waiting on them. For once, it doesn’t dampen the mood. He gives her a little kiss on the head as compensation for remembering a date so insignificant it might as well be skipped altogether. </p><p>“Thank you.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Brad Armstrong/Richard Weeks, barely - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Boys Don’t Cry</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The Armstrong house is an eyesore. A bruise on the face of an otherwise comfortable and clean little roadside town, which itself is a mere pit stop for people passing through on long commutes and summer road trips, but still one of the better ones that manages to be more than gas stations and fast food. Their house absolutely stains that. The kind of place ghost stories are made of, with broken windows and peeled paint and a lawn so unkempt it might as well be only for the snakes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And it would all be bearable for passersby, for the neighbors walking their dogs and the kids riding their bikes down the street if only it weren’t for the noise. Noise that travels, noise that’s hard to ignore but even harder to acknowledge. The eeriest part is that it’s not constant, it comes and goes like a storm on the sea. That you might pass on a good day, a nice, quiet day when dad fucks off to the bar or drinks himself so close to death he becomes just as still as a dead man, the all-powerful king of shit lying barely alive in his reclining chair. Or, you might ride by in your car with the windows rolled down and hear some violent quarrel, glass breaking and hateful words. No one ever intervenes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Brad’s fifteenth birthday falls on a Sunday. The next best day for anyone else’s birthday to fall on after Saturdays, having the day off school of course makes it the easiest day to host a party. But Sundays for the Armstrongs aren’t celebrated with staying indoors watching the big game on TV, nor will they be celebrated with balloons and cake or even just his handful of friends coming over to crowd around the shitty living room TV, where one of them brings their Atari because they know he can’t afford that stuff and they’re so sad about it because it’s the guy’s birthday and he deserves a little fun. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No, none of that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sundays are the only days you can count on Marty Armstrong bothering to get out of his La-Z-Boy and get dressed up for something other than his one true love, cheap and endless booze. Sundays are for church, and no matter how low this family sinks, they always go to church on Sunday. God has to take pity on them one of these days.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His nice clothes are the same nice clothes he had when he was twelve, suffice to say they don’t fit him so well on his fifteenth birthday. Maybe it’s all so intentional, his dad’s master plan to make the Catholic church pity them so they don’t have to feel bad about not being able to pay tithing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s no surprise that by now Brad’s grown to hate this process. Spending his Sundays in a room full of people that pity their family when he knows he doesn’t buy the preacher’s godly lies, and neither should his father given the astounding lack of godliness he upholds in his own house. But the church was supposedly there for his dad when mom passed away. Maybe it’s the last part of her he has, the only way he knows how to remember her is through the songs she loved to sing or the people at the church that thought she was such an outstanding woman.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That’s such horseshit, though, isn’t it? If he really wanted to remember her, he wouldn’t scream and break things every time he got mail addressed to her from advertisers that never bothered to take her name off their mailing lists when she passed. In truth, church is probably the bare minimum requirement to let dad get away with the things he does and still get into heaven.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Brad is fortunate enough to know by age fifteen that none of them are going to heaven. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He struggles to button the last inch of his church shirt closed, looking not quite like a man but still not quite like someone that can pull off a child’s button-up, but it’s all he has unless he wants to beg Rick’s parents for money to go buy a shirt for something he knows is a sham. He wouldn’t beg them for money even if he needed to pay for some life-saving medicine. He’d sooner just die.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He eyes himself in the mirror as long as he can without feeling repulsive. Fifteen so far has not been good to him. He’s definitely earned it when his bullies call him lame nicknames like ‘pizza-face’ or girls whisper about him smelling bad like he can’t hear them. And it just gets worse every day. He shrinks in his seat every time health teachers describe to them the changes their adolescent bodies are going through, because a lot of his peers don’t even seem to be going through it. It all just feels like a curse. Brad stares in the mirror long enough to tie his tie and then he’s done, he can’t look at himself anymore.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he turns around, Lisa’s in his bedroom doorway, sitting on the floor in her little white church dress and coloring on the doorframe in purple crayon. He’d tell her not to if they were a real family and if the house wasn’t already a dumpster fire with no chance of getting sold until they’re all dead and gone and the city bulldozes it to put something better up. It’s not one of the many asinine things that send dad into a screaming rampage, so Brad doesn’t scold her. He walks over and kneels down beside her to see what she’s doodling on his walls today.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“A cat?” He can barely make out whiskers and pointy ears. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lisa nods and doesn’t stop even when he’s won the guessing game. “I want one,” she mumbles in her clumsy five-year-old tongue. If she’s bad at talking, it’s Brad’s fault because he was the one that taught her how to speak. Same with walking, reading, and using the bathroom. But she’s pretty good at those things. Maybe, by some miracle, she’s as on track as any other five-year-old. “I saw an orange kitty outside my window.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Brad smiles a little. He used to want a dog when he was younger, and it was kind of looking like he might get one, but then things started to change and the need for man’s best friend became much smaller. “Maybe someday.” Even that is a promise he can’t keep.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re interrupted by the harsh sound of dad yelling at them to hurry up from downstairs, and just to avoid what’ll happen if they take their time, he stands and picks Lisa up with him to hurry into the family car for another Sunday of sympathetic churchgoers wondering out loud if there’s anything they can do to help the poor Armstrong father and his filthy children. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As they descend the stairs, Lisa cups her hand to his ear like she’s telling him a secret, and half-whispers in that typical kid way where it’s not really a secret because it’s so loud. “Is it your birthday today?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Brad smiles again. The only way she knows is probably because one of the ways Brad taught her how to write was to get her a little empty notebook they had stored away somewhere in the house, and it has a calendar with all the days of the year in it where they practiced writing the holidays, and both of their birthdays. Doesn’t make it any less sweet. “Yeah. I’m fifteen.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Happy birthday.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They get an evil look from dad when they get outside and he’s already in the driver’s seat like he’s been sitting here for hours waiting on them. For once, it doesn’t dampen the mood. He gives her a little kiss on the head as compensation for remembering a date so insignificant it might as well be skipped altogether. “Thank you.” </span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After church, which is the typical uncomfortable ordeal that it usually is, dad passes out in his chair in front of the morning news, Lisa goes down for a nap in her own bed because no little kid wants to be woken up for church. Brad migrates back to his room to do nothing on a day meant for him. In theory, anyway.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There are no locks on his door. He’s not even allowed to keep it shut if his father’s out looking for something to hurt. So the most he can do is shut it and pray this midday nap is one that lasts until it’s dark out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Under his bed is where his actual birthday is, a couple bottles of room-temperature whiskey stolen from downstairs and a lockbox with all the things he’s ashamed of stuffed inside. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>With a last, cautious peek outside his room, he shuts the door and pushes his bedside table halfway in front of it, just so in case Marty </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>decide that he hasn’t made life hard enough for him today, he’ll at least have time to hide his lockbox before the cat can get out of the bag.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He takes a few numbing swigs from one of the bottles to calm himself down. He learned in school that Civil War doctors would put patients to sleep with ether rags, alcohol and acid to knock them out before surgery. This feels a lot like that. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He keeps the key to the box taped under the bed. One day, he’s going to be found out. One day, there’s gonna be hell to pay for him when dad finds this stuff and demands to see what’s inside. Maybe he’ll kill him. Put him under for real, forever. Brad doesn’t know why he risks this if he knows there will be no coming back from it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Truthfully, the only thing in that box is nothing that special or incriminating, a small hoarding of men’s fashion magazines, probably more meant for women than it is for men. His shame isn’t even explicit, it’s not like the magazines boys his age steal from their dads. Not explicit, but still hard to explain and something that becomes damning evidence when his dad already suspects some things about him. He wonders if he makes it obvious. He likes looking at them. Handsome men that he’ll never be in clothes he’ll never afford. Thinks they’re handsome. Thinks he might want to know one more than he wants to be one. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What dad won’t understand if he finds this is that Brad has </span>
  <em>
    <span>tried</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He’s tried to be normal, so much and for so long. He gets by and pulls through the unbearable anxiety of it all by telling himself it’s temporary. A phase. A cold he needs to sweat out. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The men in these fashion magazines, he’s had to have seen them a thousand times by now. He snagged them from corner stores, slipped them under his jacket like the street rat everyone in town expects him to be, feeling guilty and ashamed every single time. It’s stupid. If you were to ask him what he gets out of pictures of men in nice suits looking directly at the camera like they’re looking into his heart, he couldn’t tell you. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>wouldn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> tell you. Wouldn’t tell you that there must be something wrong when he’s fifteen and has never felt the same way for real-life girls as he does for male models he’ll never know. That he sometimes thinks about what it’d be like to hold one of his friends’ hands in a way that boys their age don’t hold hands anymore because word travels fast in a small town. He’d be run out of here in a day if word got out to his dad, or the preacher at his church, or Chris Columbo and the other rabid dogs he calls friends.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s just between himself until he can get over it. But for right now, his birthday party is him sitting in his room, trying to toughen himself up to the painful burn of alcohol so he can feel just warm enough to be okay. He’s associated that warmth with men and everything about them so much that it lingers even when he isn’t tipsy from two sips. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Or it is his party, until he hears the familiar sound of small rocks hitting his window. Before he lets the panic set in and make him seem more guilty than he already feels, he caps the alcohol and shoves everything back under his bed. So much for that. Maybe god’s looking out for him after all, giving little distractions to keep himself from what he wants.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If god was looking out for him, he wouldn’t be a confused nobody living in 1980s Kansas indulging in his own shame on his fifteenth birthday. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He drapes the threadbare blanket on his bed over the edge of it so it looks inconspicuous, then opens his window.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Think you got the wrong address.” He jokes, hoping his face isn’t as flushed as it feels.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Rick shoves his hands in his pockets and smiles up at him. “Guess I’ll just go, then.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The door’s unlocked, just be quiet so he doesn’t hear.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t have to tell Rick twice. Dad’s done his very best to keep Brad’s friends out of his house due to fear, everything from holding his shotgun out on the porch when he sees them riding past on their bikes to straight up telling them he doesn’t want to see their ugly little shit faces hanging around here anymore. His words, not Brad’s. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Brad thinks it’s got something to do with his dad knowing Rick’s dad from high school and knowing how Rick’s dad turned out to be a white-collar yuppie with a nice house and a wife whose parents didn’t hate him and a son that made the honor roll and scores of things to be jealous about.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He pulls the nightstand out in front of the door so Rick can get in, shutting it behind him after confirming for a third time that dad’s still asleep in his own filth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Before he can speak, Rick hands off two small things he was keeping clutched close to his body so Brad wouldn’t see, a bag of his favorite brand of chips and a new cassette for his walkman, the nicest thing he owns. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Happy birthday.” Rick says earnestly, with the nervous lilt of someone worried his gifts aren’t enough. “It’s not a lot, I’m sorry.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Given the fact that Rick’s parents have fed him before, got him new clothes when all his old ones were torn and filthy, and basically everything but offer him a room at the house, this is more than enough. He’s in no place to make demands about birthday gifts when he didn’t even expect anyone to remember.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, I love it,” he smiles, feeling heat rise to his face. It’s more of a gift than he feels like he deserves. “Thanks, man.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“When Sticky’s dad goes to work, we’re gonna hang out at the mall, all four of us,” Rick sits on his bed and Brad’s heart skips a cautionary beat until he reassures himself silently that what he’s hiding is still hidden. “My treat.” There aren’t many places in Olathe for teenagers to hang out, at least none that have been ‘claimed’ by kids they would rather stay away from if they don’t want to spend the next school week maimed. The mall’s fine, though, anywhere’s fine if he’s with them and away from this house for a day. It’s more of a birthday than he can ask for to not spend his Sundays in a post-church panic attack wondering if God’s real and if he is, if He’s merciful. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Cool.” Brad sits next to him on the bed, nudging the lockbox further underneath them with his heel. If he could tell anyone, it’d probably be his closest friend, but things are too confusing for him to make any personal judgements at all right now. He feels like something’s wrong with him and doesn’t know how to say it out loud. To speak it into existence would make it a reality. It’s so much simpler to pretend it’s not there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He tunes back in and Rick’s talking about something completely different, complaining about how much he’s been having to study lately for all the end-of-the-year tests their teachers have been piling on, how much pressure he’s under to do well. Brad’s not that good of a student and his mind’s miles away from here so, without a stake in the conversation, he nods and shuts up for a while. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He tunes in again when the conversation switches back to him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“My parents were asking about you,” Rick chews on his nails like he does when he’s uncomfortable. Brad knows his situation makes people uncomfortable, if it didn’t, there’d be something really wrong with them. “You okay?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I’m okay.” He’s learned how to hide it better. It’s become less about him, more about people who needed that peace of mind more, Lisa, or the overly-empathetic school teachers that would try for him if they knew, but could only do so much. Not enough. Rick waits for him to say something else about it, but nothing more comes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know you can talk to me,” Rick’s voice is almost pleading, like this is a life or death issue they’re talking about. Like Brad will die if he doesn’t vomit out all the pain and the loathing of a teenager forced to be an adult before he even knows who he is, expel all the things dad does to beat him down and strip him bare of his dignity. All the things he does to undo the lullabies and life lessons his mom sang to him, her words becoming no more than a distant reminder to always do what he thinks is right. She’s no more than a memory now. He barely thinks about her, and when he does, it’s wondering if she’s disappointed in him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>No. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>talk to Rick about this.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Stop.” Is all Brad can say in the end. Pity puts a vile taste in his mouth. It’s worse coming from his best friend than it is coming from people on the street that stare at his bruises and pretend he’s more than just an afterthought. Platitudes of ‘someone should help that boy’ that he’s been hearing for years. With no help to be seen. “I don’t wanna talk about it. Please.” He has to beg for him to shut up because he knows Rick can tell when it’s all eating at him. They’ve been friends long enough to be open books to each other even if they don’t want to be. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sometimes, Rick accepts that non-excuse and doesn’t say anything else. Sometimes he just makes things worse and pushes it until one or both of them gets angry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Instead of doing either, he takes a long pause before suddenly pulling him into a hug he doesn’t have time to process or struggle free from.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They haven’t hugged like that since they were kids. Kids that didn’t know boundaries yet, kids that weren’t expected to man up until a few years later where it would no longer be acceptable for two boys to hug. It was a silent agreement. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They had never been very good at following it, though. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The hug lasts for too long. He can feel tears bubbling up at the corners of his eyes, making the room wet and cloudy. His heart’s beating so hard it might burst right there, and what a way to go. Not even a quarter of the way through life, heart bursting in his chest while his best friend holds him like a child because he doesn’t know what he can do for him anymore. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>With shaking hands, Brad returns the hug. Rick can definitely hear him making pathetic sounds trying to hold back the waterworks, but saving face still matters so he thankfully doesn’t say anything. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He realizes a few things.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That he couldn’t remember what a hug felt like before this. In his memories, he can see mom and a different version of dad hugging him and holding him, but he can’t recall what their arms felt like, how warm they were, or how safe it felt. Grandpa picking him up and putting him on his shoulders when he was proud of him. Memories of sensations that aren’t felt anymore from people that aren’t there anymore. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That he’s a crybaby. His strong facade may not even be there at all if it can be so easily broken. How used to pain he’s become, that a right-hook to the jaw means absolutely nothing, but a hug from a friend makes him fall apart. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The final thing he realizes is that this, the magazines he hides under his bed and the yearning he holds in his heart isn’t something he’s going to get over when he meets the right girl. This is going to be forever.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’s crying openly now, tears rolling down his cheeks and staining Rick’s jacket a darker shade of blue, and all he can manage to say in the thick of it is a tearful apology for nothing in particular.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m...I’m sorry…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Rick’s comforting him. It doesn’t feel wrong this time. It doesn’t feel like meaningless sympathy or promises he can’t keep. It’s just nice. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>How badly he wishes this could be every day. That this is more than a birthday present that means more to Brad than Rick will ever know. He wishes this could be forever. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But it can’t. He’s already too old to be held.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eventually, Brad is the one who breaks it so he can double over and scrub his face clean of the evidence. He’s so exhausted from it, though, that he doesn’t let them bounce back to normality just yet, leaning on his friend while he tends to his own aching heart. Rick lets him even though Brad’s a ways heavier than him and his full weight is practically all on Rick’s left shoulder. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In a comfortable silence, Rick grabs Brad’s hand and holds it and it feels like he’s in heaven. Not heaven from church, with the angels and God up in the clouds looking down on those who won’t make it there, but heaven like a warm blanket, like sharing a walkman listening to Dire Straits, like staying by the lake after dark or staying the night together. Or having your hand held in your eyesore house with your dad sleeping downstairs and your sister safe in her room on your birthday before you hang out with your friends later. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The closest he will ever get to being holy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He can live with that. </span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This one is way too personal and based off real experiences and feelings of mine projected onto brad so im sorry if this isnt very palatable but i hope you enjoy anyway &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>